Includes bibliographical references (p. 304-316) and index (p. 317-327).
In 1972, during an anthropological expedition into the remote regions of the southern Huasteca in the state of Veracruz, Mexico, Alan Sandstrom witnessed a Nahua Indian religious ceremony rarely viewed by outsiders. As part of the proceedings, a ritual specialist cut a bundle of colored tissue papers into small, doll-like figures. Detailed, often fantastically elaborate, these images depicted spirit entities that the practitioner summoned and influenced for the benefit of humanity.

The paper images cut by indigenous ritual specialists are part of the living religious tradition of the Nahua, Otomí, and Tepehua Indians of east-central Mexico, a tradition that dates to the pre-Hispanic era. This first systematic examination and analysis of traditional Indian papermaking, paper images, and their meaning and place in religious thought is based on the Sandstroms' first decade of fieldwork and research. It is written from the anthropological perspective for the interested nonspecialist.

The book is profusely illustrated in color photographs and nearly 200 black-and-white line drawings of the images, taken from the more than 1,000 specimens in the authors' archive. Historical and ethnographic information places the paper figures in perspective in Mesoamerican Indian historical and present-day culture.

This account of the paper cult figures of Mexico will appeal to Mesoamericanists, students of religion, ritual, and folk arts, craftspeople and artists, as well as tourists who today can purchase the paper images created by Otomí ritual specialists in markets worldwide.

Alan R. Sandstrom is Professor Emeritus of Anthropology and Pamela Effrein Sandstrom is Associate Librarian Emerita at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW). At the time this work was originally published by the University of Oklahoma Press in 1986, they were conducting fieldwork in Mexico, on a Fulbright Research Fellowship, accompanied by their three-year-old son, Michael. They have traveled and researched extensively among the Nahua in northern Veracruz, Mexico, and among the Tibetans in exile in northern India.

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